Carving out a profit from cosmetic surgery

Carving out a profit from cosmetic surgery - at Moneyweek.co.uk - the best of the week's international financial media.

So much for growing old gracefully. These days, many people are trying to turn back the years with huge amounts of increasingly invasive cosmetic surgery. Only a decade ago, face lifts were something reserved for the occasional paranoid celebrity, but last year, says Susanna Twidale in Shares, Americans spent a "massive" $9.4bn on cosmetic surgery and non-surgical procedures. And in the UK, the market is already worth £225m and growing: last year, the number of procedures undertaken rose by 60% and a total of 15,019 women underwent surgery. The global breast-implant market, which was the first sector of the market to really kick off (even by 1990, more than one million women had had silicone implants), is now worth around $650m alone.

Is cosmetic surgery "a 21st-century form of sculpture, an insidious tool of homogenisation, a signifier of advanced social status, or simply a way of making your life better"? asks Wendy Lewis in The Sunday Times. Whatever the justification, it is becoming more and more socially acceptable for both men and women (even Cliff Richard has confessed to going under the knife to preserve his good looks) and the need to have it is spreading like a "virus", gaining momentum through recommendation and rumour, rather than direct marketing. Friends offer friends advice on who to go to, then compare pain levels and results.

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